It's over a month - almost six weeks - since I wrote about the approach of Summer in Cyprus. It hasn't been the inexorable march that some of us expected; instead, it's been a slow and steady approach. The daytime shade temperature now, as we near the end of June, has been around 28-30C, but that's nowhere near as bad as it sometimes is by this time of year.
Richard was away during most of May and the first week of June; he visited seven different countries for work purposes, and was on a total of sixteen flights, if I remember correctly. I don't mind being on my own for extended periods; I did a few summer-preparation tasks such as washing all the curtains and windows, and cleaning most of the air conditioners. I sorted some cupboards, too, and washed all our winter jackets and fleeces, moving them and other winter clothing to the closets on our upstairs landing.
One thing I like about the approach of summer is the soft fruit that starts to appear in the local fruit shops. I have a Lakeland shopping trolley (a cool one, I'm told) and got in the habit, while Richard was away, of filling it each Friday with enough fruit and veg for the week. I didn't need a lot for just me - here's one week's selection:
Some people claim that it's expensive to eat in Cyprus, but I paid a total of €14.40 (just over £10 sterling by today's exchange rate) for that trolley's worth of fruit and vegetables, and I wasn't being particularly frugal. I included 500g strawberries and a pineapple, which are considered luxuries by many.
Cleo, our 17-year-old cat, who seemed even more frail than usual during the winter, always gets a new lease of life during the summer. She walks better, she sleeps less, and she loves to sit outside in the sunshine.
The kittens Alex and Joan, however, are finding it rather too hot...
On the second Monday of June, the local Christian writing group had our annual potluck lunch after our last meeting before September, with lots of good food:
Great company, too. It's not a big group, but we enjoy our monthly meetings.
A few days later I was privileged to be invited to our small friend E's fifth birthday dinner:
Our grandson in the UK is now a year old. I know it's a terrible cliché, but I really don't know where the years are going.
We've used the air conditioning for an hour or so in the bedroom most nights for about ten days, now. It reduces the humidity and makes it easier to get to sleep; there's a fan that runs all night to circulate the air, and it keeps it cool. The cats are not allowed in the bedroom at night now, after one of them started catching unmentionable large insects outside on the balcony and bringing them into the room.
I've stopped walking in the mornings; without the cats in the bedroom, I'm sleeping longer, and by 6.30 or so it's too hot to walk, despite it being cooler than usual (or so it seems) for the time of year. But although we cleaned the air conditioning in the main part of the house on Friday, we've only used it once, so far; for a couple of hours on Sunday when our friends were here for a game and cold meal.
Richard was away during most of May and the first week of June; he visited seven different countries for work purposes, and was on a total of sixteen flights, if I remember correctly. I don't mind being on my own for extended periods; I did a few summer-preparation tasks such as washing all the curtains and windows, and cleaning most of the air conditioners. I sorted some cupboards, too, and washed all our winter jackets and fleeces, moving them and other winter clothing to the closets on our upstairs landing.
One thing I like about the approach of summer is the soft fruit that starts to appear in the local fruit shops. I have a Lakeland shopping trolley (a cool one, I'm told) and got in the habit, while Richard was away, of filling it each Friday with enough fruit and veg for the week. I didn't need a lot for just me - here's one week's selection:
Some people claim that it's expensive to eat in Cyprus, but I paid a total of €14.40 (just over £10 sterling by today's exchange rate) for that trolley's worth of fruit and vegetables, and I wasn't being particularly frugal. I included 500g strawberries and a pineapple, which are considered luxuries by many.
Cleo, our 17-year-old cat, who seemed even more frail than usual during the winter, always gets a new lease of life during the summer. She walks better, she sleeps less, and she loves to sit outside in the sunshine.
The kittens Alex and Joan, however, are finding it rather too hot...
On the second Monday of June, the local Christian writing group had our annual potluck lunch after our last meeting before September, with lots of good food:
Great company, too. It's not a big group, but we enjoy our monthly meetings.
A few days later I was privileged to be invited to our small friend E's fifth birthday dinner:
Our grandson in the UK is now a year old. I know it's a terrible cliché, but I really don't know where the years are going.
We've used the air conditioning for an hour or so in the bedroom most nights for about ten days, now. It reduces the humidity and makes it easier to get to sleep; there's a fan that runs all night to circulate the air, and it keeps it cool. The cats are not allowed in the bedroom at night now, after one of them started catching unmentionable large insects outside on the balcony and bringing them into the room.
I've stopped walking in the mornings; without the cats in the bedroom, I'm sleeping longer, and by 6.30 or so it's too hot to walk, despite it being cooler than usual (or so it seems) for the time of year. But although we cleaned the air conditioning in the main part of the house on Friday, we've only used it once, so far; for a couple of hours on Sunday when our friends were here for a game and cold meal.
1 comment:
Have a good one...
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